News, ideas and a software CEO's thoughts from 25 years in the industry.

Hiring for Manufacturing: Hard Truths About Soft Skills

We occasionally in this post address hiring concerns and issues, particularly in the manufacturing arena in which so many of our clients operate. So a recent (9/20/12) article in the Wall Street Journal by Nick Schulz, author and Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, caught our attention.

In the Journal article, Schulz tells of asking employers about the skills today’s manufacturers are unable to find. His assumption is that positions are going begging today because employers simply can’t match up current needs with today’s workforce.

Turns out, that’s not really it at all.

[For a look at what we learned about so-called “soft” skills a few months ago, we remind you of this post.]

As one respondent told him, “To be perfectly honest… we have a hard time finding people who can pass the drug test.” He’s since heard this many times. Just as troubling, Schultz finds, are those who say that simply finding someone who could properly answer the phone was a challenge.

Despite a recent emphasis in manufacturing hiring that is focused on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills, the evidence suggests many employers would be happy just to find job applicants who have the “soft” skills that used to be taken for granted. In fact, a recent Manpower skills survey noted that nearly 20% of employers cited this lack of soft skills as a key reason they couldn’t hire needed employees.

Such traits as interpersonal skills, enthusiasm, motivation and an elementary command of the English language (written and oral) are in increasingly shorter supply these days. Simple grammar and spelling skills – ones at the top of the “basic” skills embodied in older workers — are not readily present among younger ones, according to a joint SHRM-AARP study.

The same study found that “professionalism” or “work ethic” is the top “applied” skill that younger workers lack. Another study found that manufacturers were finding it harder to find punctual, reliable workers, compared to even as recently as five years ago.

What writer R.R. Reno has termed “forms of social discipline” are, in the words of Journal writer Schulz, “indispensible components of a person’s human capital and… needed for economic success.”

There’s plenty of blame to go round, of course, from our primary and high school educational challenges to the collapse of intact families and what the Journal calls “the erosion of human and social capital in many communities.”

When viewed in this somewhat discouraging light, it appears our current unemployment woes run even deeper and more fundamental than appear at first blush. Truly, as both a nation and as an economy, there is serious work to be done.

And if you are an employer, I suspect you know exactly what we’re talking about.